1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a cassette label used attached to a video tape cassette and capable of recording information concerning the recorded video data etc. and to a video tape cassette to which the cassette label is attached.
2. Description of the Related Art
There is a desire to record or store video data filmed by a television camera or other camera apparatus and recorded on a video tape in a state where information such as recording date and time, recording place, title, recording person, etc. can be easily confirmed.
Particularly, in a case when used for news gathering operations in a television broadcasting station, it is necessary to select and edit the required cuts from among a large number of cuts (continuously shot video or video data thereof) taken by a video camcoder etc. at a high speed.
Up until now, the usual practice has been to use the technique of separately making memos of a variety of recording information of the recorded video data on paper or the like at the time of shooting and selecting the desired video data at a high speed while viewing the memos at the time of reproduction and editing.
Further, in a cassette library or other system automatically handling a large amount of video cassettes, the video cassette tapes are managed by using cassette labels on which barcodes are printed.
Further, in recent years, use has been made of 1/4 inch digital video cassette tapes etc. in which semiconductor memory elements such as flash memories are incorporated in the cassette accommodating the video tape so as to enable recording of information such as the recording duration, recording contents, and title.
Data is recorded in and reproduced from the semiconductor memory element incorporated in the video cassette tape by for example a contact system via four electrodes, for example ground, power supply, clock, and data electrodes provided in the vicinity of the anti-erasure tab of the back surface of the cassette case.
However, as explained above, in the method of management of making memos on paper or the like, there arises a problem of cases of loss of the paper or a problem that automation is not possible.
Further, in the method of printing a barcode on the label, there is a problem in that the amount of information which can be recorded is small.
Further, in the method of using a semiconductor memory, the electrodes on the apparatus side must be made to suitably contact the electrodes, so there is a problem that the recording/reproduction of data could not be adequately carried out if the positioning thereof was not precise. Further, there also arises a problem in that poor contact occurs due to the adhesion of dust etc. and therefore the recording/reproduction of data cannot be adequately carried out. In any case, there is a limit to the number of repeat uses because of the contact system, the stability of operation is not sufficient, and there is a problem in reliability.
Further, while it may be possible to easily confirm the content of footage which is newly recorded using the video cassette tapes mentioned above, this cannot be used for the enormous amount of video tape cassettes, several hundreds of thousands in for example television broadcasting stations, which have been already recorded on.